Should Early Childhood Education Facilities Serve Wholesome Food?

This systematic review provides an up-to-date analysis of healthy eating interventions in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services, focusing on their effect on child diet, anthropometrics, cardiovascular disease risk markers, and related health. Early nutrition and development interventions depend on caregivers’ knowledge, skills, and capacity to provide their young. ECEC services are recommended settings to deliver healthy eating interventions as they provide access to many children. Nutrition during early childhood is an essential foundation for healthy child growth and development.

The review discusses the theoretical and practical benefits and challenges of implementing integrated nutrition and ECD interventions, along with evidence for best practice and benefit-cost. Barriers to healthy eating in ECE include factors such as long-term goals and preconditions, backwards mapping, and teacher-child interactions. A scoping literature review identified three core areas of research: factors influencing children’s eating practices, teacher-child interactions, and ECEC-based healthy eating interventions.

Healthy food environments in early childhood play an important role in establishing health-promoting nutritional behaviors for later life. ECE programs can participate in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), which reimburses programs for providing healthy meals and snacks to children. Healthy eating programs may lead to small improvements in child diet quality, increase fruit consumption, and potentially improve vegetable consumption.

Child care facilities that serve a variety of nutrient-dense foods can help promote proper growth and development in children. The Child and Adult Care Food Program is the primary national program that enables child-care settings to provide healthy meals for children. Currently, CACFP requires ECE providers to follow national nutrition standards for meals and snacks served in their settings, which supports the importance of healthy eating interventions in ECEC services.